Tag: charter school

The Learning Curve #107

NACSA’s Dr. Karega Rausch on Charter Public School Authorizing

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Hosted by Cara Candal & Gerard Robinson
With guest Karega Rausch

This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara Candal and Gerard Robinson talk with Dr. Karega Rausch, President and CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. Dr. Rausch shares some of his background, his interest in K-12 education reform and charter public schools, and lessons from Indiana and other states that inform his work. With charter public school enrollment nearly doubling to 3.4 million students in roughly 7,700 schools and campuses across America, he talks about the states that have experienced the largest growth and those that have lagged behind. They discuss the role that single and multiple charter authorizers play in charter school expansion and performance, academic quality, and diverse pedagogical approaches. They delve into the charter policy bargain of greater school autonomy in exchange for greater accountability, and how charters are held responsible for student performance. Dr. Rausch also challenges misguided criticisms of for-profit school management companies running charter public schools, and offers thoughts on how to rebuild wider political coalitions to support charters.

Stories of the Week: EdChoice celebrates and reflects on ten years of American public opinion surveys on education. For the first time since the enactment of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Congress is about to fully fund K-12 special education programs.

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The Learning Curve #100

Doug Lemov on Teach Like a Champion & Successful Charter Public Schools

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Hosted by Cara Candal & Gerard Robinson
With guest Doug Lemov

This week on “The Learning Curve,” Gerard Robinson and guest co-host Charles Chieppo talk with Doug Lemov, author of the international bestseller, Teach Like a Champion. Doug describes how he became interested in charter schools, dating back to the late 1990s in Massachusetts, and how the sector developed into a nationally recognized success story. He discusses his experience with the Uncommon Schools charter network, cited by Stanford’s CREDO for helping students make the greatest academic gains of any large charter network in the country. They delve into some key findings from Teach Like a Champion on academics and teacher qualifications. They also explore how parents and schools should address COVID-related learning loss, especially among the most vulnerable students. Finally, Doug shares highlights from his new book, Re-Connect: Building School Culture for Meaning, Purpose, and Belonging, on the impact of excessive screen time on students’ learning and mental health.

Stories of the Week: Is the future of gifted and talented education uncertain, and if so, will that remove incentives for some families to remain in public schools? In The Washington Post, Virginia education secretary Aimee Guidera outlines the Youngkin administration’s plans to ensure every family has access to a quality education.

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The Learning Curve #71

Andrew Campanella on National School Choice Week

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Hosted by Cara Candal & Gerard Robinson
With guest Andrew Campanella

This week on “The Learning Curve,” co-hosts Gerard Robinson and Cara Candal talk with Andrew Campanella, the president of National School Choice Week. They discuss why 2021 was called the “Year of School Choice,” and the implications of more academic options for K-12 education reform across America. They delve into the reasons why political support for even the highest performing charter public schools has eroded, the path forward to rebuild wider coalitions, and why for-profit school management companies for charters are so controversial. Andrew offers insights on innovative models that thrived during the pandemic, including micro-schools and learning pods, lessons we can draw from digital and blended learning, and how state policymakers have responded, in some cases with restrictive measures to undermine these models. Lastly, they discuss the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling in favor of school choice advocates in the landmark Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue decision, the follow-on Carson v. Makin case, and its likely impact.

Related: Read Cara Candal’s new report for Pioneer Institute, “Modeling an Education Savings Account for Massachusetts.”

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The Learning Curve #18

Eva Moskowitz of Success Academy on Charter Schools, Achievement Gaps, & COVID-19 Learning Loss

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Hosted by Cara Candal & Gerard Robinson

This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara and Gerard kick off the new year with Eva Moskowitz, CEO & Founder of Success Academy Charter Schools, a network of 47 schools enrolling 20,000 K-12 students in New York City. Eva shares her own education path, and how it influences her leadership and philosophy. She highlights some of the methods Success Academy has pioneered and implemented to drive outstanding academic achievement for the city’s most underserved students, as well as adjustments the network has made in response to COVID-19. They discuss the next U.S. Secretary of Education and the critical issue of school reopening, as well as learning loss and other challenges the pandemic is bringing to light and exacerbating for New York City’s public school children. Eva also shares thoughts on innovative approaches to resource allocation, and the recruitment, preparation, and retention of high-quality teachers and principals. She concludes with advice for the next generation of educators.

Stories of the Week: Gerard and Cara review some of the major priorities for Miguel Cardona, President-elect Biden’s nominee for U.S Secretary of Education. In Indiana, a new report finds that only 43 percent of the state’s public education employees are teachers. Is the support staff hiring surge, especially at this time, crowding out higher teacher compensation and other classroom needs?

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The Learning Curve #15

Stanford’s Prof. Caroline Hoxby on Charter Schools, K-12 Ed Reform, & Global Competitiveness

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Hosted by Cara Candal & Gerard Robinson

This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara and Gerard are joined by Caroline Hoxby, the Scott and Donya Bommer Professor of Economics at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution. Professor Hoxby shares what inspired her interest in charter schools, school choice, and social mobility, and the major lessons she has learned about K-12 education policymaking in the U.S. throughout her career. She discusses the benefits of randomized lottery-based research in yielding the most reliable charter school effectiveness data. They also delve into the growing disconnect between the nation’s increasing per-pupil expenditures and stagnant student achievement, and the long-term implications of these data regarding social mobility and the nation’s economic vitality.

Stories of the Week: Will COVID-19 usher in a whole new approach to school funding that ties spending to students’ needs or mastery? Defying expectations based on past recessions, enrollment in K-12 private schools has increased during COVID, according to the results of a new survey of 160 independent schools in 15 states.

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The Learning Curve #14

SABIS® President Carl Bistany on International Education, Charter Public Schools, & At-Risk Students

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Hosted by Cara Candal & Gerard Robinson

This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara and Gerard are joined by Carl Bistany, the president of SABIS® Educational Systems, an education company founded over 130 years ago that serves young women in the Middle East, and poor and minority students in the U.S. Carl describes SABIS’® successful model for educating underserved and at-risk students, especially its use of regular, consistent testing, to bridge achievement gaps among those who are often seen as the most challenging to educate. He describes some of his proudest accomplishments, as well as barriers that have made it difficult, politically, for for-profit school management companies like SABIS® to operate and expand their successful models. They also explore some of the most promising developments in K-12 education reform internationally, and in the U.S.

Stories of the Week: Ohio lawmakers have passed a proposal that would overhaul the criteria for the state’s largest private school tuition program, to serve more low-income students currently enrolled in public schools whose performance ranks in the bottom fifth. A study by Bellwether Education found that the rate of teacher retirement in six of seven states reviewed has declined by five percent. Has COVID-related virtual instruction helped retain veteran faculty?

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The Learning Curve #6

Harvard PEPG’s Prof. Paul Peterson on Charter Schools, Digital Learning, & Ed Next Polling

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Hosted by Cara Candal & Gerard Robinson

This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara and Gerard are joined by Paul Peterson, the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government and Director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University. They discuss his recent Wall Street Journal op-ed analyzing NAEP results from 2005-17 to show that charter schools are helping underprivileged students improve at faster rates than their peers in traditional district schools, especially among African-American students. Professor Peterson shares thoughts on the implications of this evidence for charter school expansion, and the challenges from opponents, predominantly in the Northeast, who seek to over-regulate charter schools. They also delve into lessons from COVID-19 with regard to the long overdue embrace of online education, options such as micro-schools and pods that are unfortunately often only available to affluent families, and the effects of school closures on children.

Stories of the Week: In Boston, attending a charter school dramatically narrows achievement gaps between special-education students and English learners, and their traditional public school counterparts, according to new analysis from Tufts Professor Elizabeth Setren. In Kansas, the Education Commissioner stated that both remote and hybrid learning models are not effective and sustainable through the academic year.

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City Journal's 10 Blocks

Catholic Schools, Charters, and Choice

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Nicole Stelle Garnett joins Brian Anderson to discuss the importance of Catholic schools, their struggle to compete with charter schools, and what the Supreme Court’s recent Espinoza decision will mean for private-school choice—the subjects of her story, “Why We Still Need Catholic Schools,” in City Journal’s new summer issue.

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The Learning Curve #4

Max Eden, Education Researcher, on School Policies & Mass Shootings

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Hosted by Bob Bowdon

In our Newsmaker Interview, Bob talks with Max Eden, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, on the gravely misguided policies that he believes are contributing to shocking tragedies such as the Parkland school shooting, the subject of his new book, Why Meadow Died: The People and Policies That Created The Parkland Shooter and Endanger America’s Students.

Stories of the Week: At Edison High School in Philadelphia, students are in the building – but not in the classroom. Is the district gaming the attendance tracking system? Does the competition from charter schools drive up overall student achievement – in charters and traditional district schools – in cities? A new report from Fordham’s David Griffith sheds some light. In Arkansas, a Little Rock school board member calls for decertifying the teachers union. Is this legal? Bob checks in with Patrick Semmons of the National Right to Work Foundation about the rules around monopoly bargaining.

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City Journal's 10 Blocks

Charter Schools and Teachers’ Strikes

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Hosted by Seth Barron

Ray Domanico joins City Journal associate editor Seth Barron to discuss charter schools in New York City, the growing protests by education workers across the country, and Democrats’ weakening support for charters.

In teachers’ unions protests from West Virginia to California, activists claim that the growth of charters has come at the expense of district schools.

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There’s No Such Thing as a “Public” School

Jason Bedrick
Jason Bedrick
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shutterstock_356921591Perhaps the most pervasive myth about our nation’s education system is the notion that “public schools have to take all children.” Last year, when criticizing charter schools that she claimed, “don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids,” Hillary Clinton quipped, “And so the public schools are often in a no-win situation, because they do, thankfully, take everybody.” In fact, they do not. At best, so-called “public” schools have to take all children in a particular geographic area, although they can (and do) expel children based on their behavior. They are more appropriately termed “district schools” because they serve residents of a particular district, not the public at large. Privately owned shopping malls are more “public” than district schools.

This wouldn’t be a serious problem if every district school offered a quality education but, in fact, they do not. Rather, the quality of education that the district schools provide tends to be highly correlated with the income levels of the residents of those districts. As Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation and I noted last year, our housing-based system of allocating education leads to severe inequities:

There is a strong correlation between these housing prices and school performance. In nearly all D.C. neighborhoods where the median three-bedroom home costs $460,000 or less, the percentage of students at the zoned public school scoring proficient or advanced in reading was less than 45 percent. Children from families that could only afford homes under $300,000 are almost entirely assigned to the worst-performing schools in the District, in which math and reading proficiency rates are in the teens.

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